astrolabia
7mo ago
I agree with most of this, but I feel like some male shit-talking and joking, at least in a group setting, also has an element of faux-combat. Constantly challenging each other is a form of play-fighting, but it's also a test - someone who regularly can't come up with a comeback or simply shuts down will eventually lose status and become more likely to be simply dominated by the others.
astrolabia
10mo ago
Wow:
the 1865 act (the "Red Flag Act"), which required all road locomotives, which included automobiles, to travel at a maximum of 4 mph (6.4 km/h) in the country and 2 mph (3.2 km/h) in the city
astrolabia
1mo ago
Relatedly, there was a poster here who once explained that the main rationale for the separation of church and state was not to improve governance of the state, but to protect the church from the corrupting influence of power. Blew my mind at the time but makes total sense now.
astrolabia
7mo ago
Trump doesn't like war in and of itself, but he hates being seen as "weak" far, far, FAR more. Avoiding situations that "make us look weak" is the amorphous basis of his entire foreign policy.
Aren't these almost the same thing? The way you avoid wars is by being seen as strong and, crucially, as willing to fight if necessary. Countries that appear weak, or appear strong but unwilling to fight, are the ones that end up being attacked.
astrolabia
3mo ago
I basically agree with you about values and freedom. I guess my main fear is around the information environment we provide re: "This is the closest we can get you today." I'm not an expert but I get the impression that many (maybe most?) people who attempt to transition are deeply mislead about both the best and worst-case outcomes. I just don't expect any modern Western institution to be able to honest about what wretched results most transitioners end up having, nor about what most people honestly think of them.
Relatedly, Blanchard wrote about how his MtF patients could usually see that the other MtF patients clearly did not pass, but believed that they themselves did.
I think you could make similar arguments about the information environment surrounding lots of other early life choices, or educational choices such as pursuing arts degrees. But most of those are less catastrophic and irreversible. I guess at least Western society now does a pretty good job of showing the downsides of joining the army.
astrolabia
3mo ago
There are just as many people committed to cracking eggs at all costs as there people who will claim that puberty blockers gave their cancer cancer.
I don't think that's true. Or at least, my impression is that almost every elementary through high school teacher in north america who talks about the issue gives the impression that it's basically possible to successfully transition.
All I can say is that we should let people make their own choices, and if they're hard and risky choices, do our best to ensure they're exposed to the facts they need.
I don't think I'm willing to bite the libertarian bullet here. E.g. I don't want my kids to have the option to do heroin, even if it's paired with a pamphlet explaining the real likely outcomes. However, I don't even think that that's a viable option. Seems like our options are: ban and demonize heroin, or legalize it and subsidize its use (as was recently done in British Columbia).
Same with transitioning kids: I don't see how we ever get to a world where it's both legal and the pros and cons are presented honestly. So I think I'd rather throw the few kids who could conceivably benefit from it under the bus and ban it for everybody.
astrolabia
10mo ago
Yep. I think it'll also eventually be illegal to raise a kid without allowing your parenting to be scrutinized in detail. I think the main reason it isn't today is because it'd be too expensive, not because it'd be politically untenable.
astrolabia
1mo ago
What a payoff, thanks for asking, @butts!
This guy reminds me a lot of a younger version of myself. I suppose stoicism is a skill - I certainly attempted to reach inner peace with a combination of weed and videogames at some points, but was driven to try at life by a desire for women. It sounds like this guy was "scared straight" from engaging with the world.
This guy honestly sounds accomplished to me in his own way. He really learned to tend his own garden! I wouldn't trade my life for his, but if I was a NEET, I can't think of a nicer setup.
I wonder if his parents could have done anything differently, or if this is just the way it goes sometimes.
astrolabia
9mo ago
I beg you to consider the possibility that progress in AI development will continue. The doomers are worried about future models, not current ones.
astrolabia
10mo ago
Men are orders of magnitude stronger than women
No, they're not 100x stronger. Did you mean multiple standard deviations stronger?
astrolabia
1mo ago
You've almost exactly described elite STEM PhD programs!
astrolabia
3mo ago
how to accurately determine if a child is trans
It seems like this would require defining what it means to be trans... any suggestions?
Those people ought to just be ignored and will simply lose their credibility over time if giving puberty blockers to kids proves itself to be fine.
Seems like you're begging the question here. If people think something is wrong in principle, then it won't be "fine" by their lights even if it doesn't cause secondary problems.
astrolabia
7mo ago
Maybe we're talking about different things. I'm thinking of Obama talking about red lines in Syria, then not doing anything about it. Or Putin hinting about using nukes over foreign involvement in Ukraine and then not. I agree one can also go too far and be easily baited.
astrolabia
9mo ago
I don't think any human society comes close to crossing that line when it comes to alcohol
Not even remote native communities with super high alcoholism rates, and where lots of kids get fetal alcohol syndrome?
alcohol has proven its ability to coexist alongside the development of advanced human societies over the course of several millennia.
Yes, but not native american societies. And there's plenty of evidence that Eurasians have had some serious selection pressure to help them deal with alcohol (and alcoholism is still a huge problem in Europe + North America).
astrolabia
10mo ago
I don't think it was culture war - probably just well meaning people with tentative grasp of current tech and the normal bureaucratic tendency to expand your authority.
This does seem to match much of normal culture war behavior, though, just without the step of demonizing the people who oppose one's naive overreach.
astrolabia
10mo ago
From the point of view of the powers that be, this seems like a great argument in favor of muzzling LLMs.
astrolabia
11mo ago
Dude, she accused me of molesting her.
This is consistent with what I was saying - my point is that she's being obviously unreasonable!
She's also a fucking sperg
I also might be wrong about this, but my understanding from being a bit of a sperg myself is that things like the rules of attraction + most emotions are similar to everyone else, but with a layer of neuroticism and poor social skills on top.
Even if that's a thing women do, she wouldn't.
I personally spent way too long thinking that sufficiently smart women wouldn't require, or play, these kinds of games - thinking something like "If they are so un-self-aware as to play the normal BS social games, I'm not sure I want them anyways". I've also known a few amazing women that were self-aware enough to understand their own reactions, but even they still had the same requirements for attraction as the others. I think your dating experiences would make way more sense if consider that even sperg women have similar romantic responses and impulses as normal women.
astrolabia
11mo ago
Wow, I never heard about the 1977 flu this whole time. And I thought I had built an information diet that would expose me to this kind of forbidden knowledge.
astrolabia
11mo ago
less offensive to call a woman a chestfeeder than to remind a man that he doesn't have breasts, and cannot breastfeed
Oh, I thought it was to avoid reminding women who are breastfeeding but identify as male that they do have breasts. Which always seemed like it must be a rare request. Like how many women feeding their baby using their breasts, who certainly can feel what's happening, still get psychic psychic relief from not acknowledging that it's a breast?
astrolabia
9mo ago
a somewhat-effeminate underemployed head-in-the-clouds armchair intellectual
I loved your post and agree with your advice. But as a guy who had a sort-of-similar trajectory, this still sounds totally fixable! I know you said you're struggling with physical health, and I haven't used testosterone myself, but is there a reason you're not trying to simply become literally high-T?
I’m too redpilled on women and too unable to play along with the female style of unfocused political venting to have much chance of a successful relationship with the kind of progressive woman
My wife is the picture of ostensible progressivism, and it certainly causes tension, but it's not fatal. I always thought the red-pill message was that politics aren't usually dealbreakers even if they're stated to be - you can simply change the subject, agree and amplify, or simply be a compelling enough package that she'll find ways to make it work from her end. I know it's easier said than done, but it sounds like you have the basic ingredients at hand!
astrolabia
10mo ago
in the name of "ethics", been barred from driving trips already serviced by trains
I agree that this is ridiculous, but I'm also not sure how I'll make a living when machines can do everything I can cheaper, better, and more reliably.
astrolabia
4mo ago
One reason to be part of a pension like the NHS is that it puts you in an alliance with a large constituency who might plausibly have enough political power between them to keep the gravy train going down the road.
Urban professionals have made it clear that importing migrants for their personal comfort matters.
I think this is unrealistically conspiratorial. I am an urban professional, and it's clear to me that refugees and anyone coming from say, Haiti is not a net contributor to my or any of my countrymen's comfort [EDIT: on average]. But I don't talk about it often for fear of being fired or ostracised.
astrolabia
10mo ago
Did Meloni actually do much about immigration to Italy, though?
Isn't it clear that these proximate causes are mostly Schelling points for coordination? The same people rioting have also been upset by thousands of other smaller incidents. Same for the Floyd riots.
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